Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/272

 "Monsey is no man's fool," he muttered. "He knows his men are liable to stampede under the old fear of the Sayaks, in the dark. Those flares"

"Quick!" cried Edith. "We must do something before it is too late."

The man paid her a tribute of admiration in a swift glance. Then his eyes hardened with recollection of the peril below. The whole vista of the courtyard was fast being revealed by the sputtering flares. The door leading to the hold and the tower where they stood must be clearly outlined to any one who chanced to look that way. It would be difficult, practically impossible, to escape from the door into the courtyard without being seen.

Still, that was their only chance of safety, Donovan reasoned. A quick sally, a rush to one of the breaks in the wall on a side away from the Sayak attack—a gantlet [sic] of bullets He knelt down, resting his rifle on a fallen timber, waist-high, and searched for Abbas. Edith tugged at his shoulder vigorously. "What, dear?" he asked, without shifting his position. "Not that, Donovan Khan," the girl exclaimed. "That is not why I brought you here.'

"Righto!" he murmured cheerily. "But it will help, you know"

"No—not that." She crouched beside him, her face close to his. "Don't you see? We can do more than that!"

A ragged volley came out of the gloom, two hundred yards across the plateau. Under cover of the swirling smoke that rose over the ground, they saw groups of Sayaks advancing. Behind the parapet the